Adams, Charles Francis

1807 - Charles Francis Adams, born on the 18th of August in Boston, Massachusetts U.S. An American diplomat who played an important role in keeping Britain neutral during the U.S. Civil War and in promoting the arbitration of the important “Alabama” claims. The son of Pres. John Quincy Adams and the grandson of Pres. John Adams, Charles.

1825 - He graduated from Harvard.

1840 - He served for six years as a member of the Massachusetts legislature and as the editor of a party journal, the Boston Whig.

1848 - He felt that the Whigs should take a more forthright position against the extension of slavery into the territories, and when, the so-called Conscience Whigs broke with the party to form the antislavery Free-Soil Party, he received the vice-presidential nomination of the new coalition.

1856 - The emergence of the Republican Party offered him the permanent political affiliation he was seeking.

1858 - He was elected to the U.S. Congress from his father's old district. When the Republicans won at the polls two years later, he was named ambassador to Great Britain by his close friend William H. Seward, the new secretary of state.

1861 - Civil war broke out in April, when he arrived in London the following month, he found that Great Britain had already recognized Confederate belligerency.

1863 - His main mission was to prevent the British from abandoning neutrality, and, with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the immediate danger of diplomatic recognition of the South was over.

1871 - 1872 - He served as U.S. arbiter on the international commission that met at Geneva to settle the “Alabama” claims. His name is inseparable from this seminal work in forwarding the concept of world law through arbitration.

1886 - Died on the 21st of November in Boston.

Page last updated: 6:09am, 05th Apr '07

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